Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen (ready to read books .txt) 📕

‘she’ll be OK. It’s just because it’s new and she’s not used to it.’

I tried to shake the mounting sense of unease about what we were about to do.

The person who was taking her to the safe house we’d never met before, we’d never meet again. He didn’t introduce himself – we didn’t learn his name – the only reassurance we had that he was part of the operation was that he had come at the precise time we were told – at 4.17 p.m.

My eyes sought clock faces all day but in those last few minutes, with the cake, with the candle, the rapping at first surprised me.

Thomas looked over, love written starkly all over his face. He squeezed my hand as if to say, ‘It’s time.’ Santa busied herself with the bag we’d packed, and swept Mimi up in a close hug, whispering words into her hair that I could not make out.

When she released her, we tried to explain in our over-jolly words.

‘We’re going to be seeing you really soon.’

‘It’s an adventure.’

‘You’re going to go with this nice man – but soon we’ll all be together!’

The man who was taking her paid no attention to what we were saying. He was bent over his goSphere, leant against the wall, as we made our goodbyes.

‘We’ll see you soon!’ we chimed again, as much to reassure ourselves as her; we kept repeating it as though it would make it fact.

And as we held her to us and kissed her cheeks, it seemed as though she partly understood what was happening. I thought at first that she knew that she was leaving us. I felt it in her hug, the way she lifted her face only slightly to be kissed – it was too restrained, not in key with her usual abandon at showing and receiving love.

She looked over the shoulder of the man as she was carried out, questioning us silently in her still stare.

She didn’t look away.

But then she suddenly began to scream. It was like an alarm going off inside her. She struggled and wriggled in the man’s arms.

She reached towards us desperately, her fingers grasping the air, crying out for us.

Thomas clamped his arm around my shoulder, gripping me tightly.

‘Mimi!’ I called out.

She twisted sharply in the man’s arms. He almost dropped her. He tried to keep her calm as she thrashed and shrieked but it only made her scream all the more.

It was too much to bear.

‘Let her go!’ I screamed, breaking free of Thomas. ‘Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt her like that!’

‘No, Kit.’ Thomas was upon me. ‘We have to let her go.’ He held me back and slammed our front door shut on the man grappling with our distraught daughter.

I heard her screams long after they’d gone.

NOW

Mimi gurgles as she glides back and forth on the swing, laughing.

Thomas and I stand just behind her, just a little distance between us.

She grumbles if the swing begins to lose its momentum and slows; she wants to fly high and fast.

I can’t believe how quickly she has recovered. There’s been no stopping her since she regained her strength. She had to stay in hospital for a few days but the doctors were pleased with her progress.

From the outside, you would not know that there was anything wrong with our picture. We are together again, us three; our daughter is well, she’s thriving, she’s trying to walk and then falls and then tries again. There’s no lasting damage. She’s lucky; we’re lucky.

We are not the only family in the park, it’s the first sunny day we’ve had after a week of sleeting rain.

There’s a sense of hilarity, of laughter, in the air, from both adults and children. We’ve all been too long cooped up inside. But only the children scream as they scatter across the grass, loop in and out of the playground.

Quite often now, I’ll catch sight of a boy and see Jakob in him. There’ll be something about the tuft of their hair, their bandy legs that will draw me to them. I have not seen him since the day we met outside their house. Though I can understand what happened between Evie and me, I find I have no impulse to see her any more. That might change, I hope that it will, but for now I live each day in the only way I can bear it and that means, for the moment, not seeing my sister.

I hear someone say my name and when I look towards the sound, I almost do not recognise the person before me.

She has dyed her hair so it is darker than I ever saw it. It’s a little too black; it drains her face, pulls the colour from her lips.

‘Marie,’ I say. The card that I was clutching I try to fumble into my pocket, without her seeing.

‘How are you?’ she asks.

I cannot answer her. I reach out my hands to my side in a shrug, just as she is joined by Leo. He appears older somehow, as though more time has passed than the few years since I last saw them.

‘It’s Kit,’ Marie says to him, unnecessarily, for it is clear he recognises me.

‘My God,’ Leo is saying. ‘We still talk about you – about what you did for us. You were like our guardian angel. We’re sorry that we just disappeared after – afterwards… we had to get away.’

‘Of course,’ I say. It’s not enough. They look at me, at Thomas, expectantly. This is the moment that I should introduce them but I hesitate. The silence almost turns unbearable but it is broken by Mimi crying out.

‘Mama, Mama,’ she repeats like a siren.

Marie and Leo’s faces light up, the way everyone’s does at the sight of a young child, but too quickly the light fades and dies away. Their eyes search Mimi’s face, looking for another’s features.

When I don’t speak, Thomas does: ‘This is Mimi,’ he says to Marie and Leo. ‘I’m